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Health by the Numbers
"How many of you agree with the statement, 'Health is priceless'?" A robust show of hands. "How many of you went jogging this morning?" No hands. "Now what if I tell you that each hour spent jogging extends your expected life by an hour? So health does …
Women in the Sciences
Five professors and the dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) are jointly pursuing creative approaches to a persistent problem: the severe underrepresentation of women faculty members in Harvard's science departments. They proceed in an …
Harvard President Drew Faust to Step Down in 2018
Drew Gilpin Faust, who assumed office as Harvard’s twenty-eighth president on July 1, 2007 , announced today that she would conclude her service at the end of the next academic year, June 30, 2018. Her planned retirement is a logical transition: The date …
Street Doctor
Joe Meuse spent years drunk on the streets of Boston, sleeping under bridges, over grates, in train stations and tunnels—wherever he passed out. Occasionally he agreed to be driven to a shelter. Meuse was told he logged an astonishing 216 hospital …
Issue: January-February 2016
Institutional, International
Undergraduates are traveling more these days because, well, they are traveling more. It’s more common today than ever before for students to go abroad for the first time while still in high school—and not just students from well-to-do families, says Nancy …
Issue: November-December 2009
Behind the Healthcare Debate
The healthcare reform proposals under consideration in Congress this year “are not pretty,” Yale political-science professor Jacob S. Hacker ’94 told an audience at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) on September 25. “They are meant to pass.” The …
When “Failure” Means Success
No one wants to talk about failing at Harvard—and it’s not because we haven’t experienced failures here. After four years at the school, most students, if we’re being honest, can recall a handful. There are classroom failures and relationship failures: …
Issue: March-April 2023
Altering Course
Of the nearly 100 quadrillion British thermal units of energy (BTUs) used each year in the United States, 61 quads are wasted. That is not a moral judgment, or a commentary on insufficient conservation (poor insulation, idling cars, people failing to turn …
Issue: May-June 2015
The Education of a Harvard Lawyer
In the photograph here, taken on an overcast morning in the fall of 1956, you see the smartest Harvard Law School students in a student body of approximately 1,500. Each of these 58 students has been officially recognized by the Law School’s academic …
Issue: January-February 2021
Brevia
Endowment Manager Earnings Harvard Management Company ’s (HMC) annual disclosure of the salary, bonus, and benefit payments to its president and five most highly paid portfolio managers, released on December 20, just before the University’s year-end …
Issue: March-April 2008
Extracurriculars
Harvard Square offers something for everyone this fall: saunter down to the Charles River and join an ad hoc community choir as they light up the Weeks Footbridge, learn the latest about animal sexuality at the Cabot Science Library, watch Olympic skaters …
Issue: September-October 2007
The “Father” Father
Not long ago, while up late reading in the St. Patrick parish rectory, Father Paul O’Brien ’86 heard gunshots and smelled smoke—not for the first time on the south side of Lawrence, Massachusetts. Once the golden model of an American industrial city, …
Issue: January-February 2012
Attend to the Cursed
Few who stood at a Harvard podium during Commencement week mentioned the war in Iraq. Joshua Patashnik '07, of Adams House and San Diego, did do so in his Harvard Oration during Class Day celebrations on Wednesday, June 6, a speech that mostly was a brief …
Issue: July-August 2007
Judy Budnitz: Flying Leaps
In Nice Big American Baby , the newest collection of short stories by Judy Budnitz ’95, the author considers mothers and babies—and the uncertain boundary between them. “Flush” tells of a mother (with a mysterious ability to disappear) and her daughters, …
Issue: March-April 2007
Iambic Imbroglio
In 19 B.C., the Roman noblemen Varius and Tucca were given an extraordinary task: destroy the Aeneid. On his deathbed, Virgil asked his friends to burn the manuscript that he had spent the last 10 years of his life working on and that, to his mind, …
Issue: January-February 2007